Friday, September 28, 2007

Bicycling with First-Year Students

One activity I've never done but that has been recommended to me many a time is to set up a folding chair inside one of my university's many bike traffic circles during the first week of class. Apparently, it's quite a spectacle. To paraphrase an old friend: Everyone loves a bike wreck.

Except me. Because, you see, I am for the most part a bicycle commuter.* And it's really, really annoying when 30,000 students descend on campus at once, most of them on bikes, with 25% of them probably not having ridden a bike since, oh, age 10. It has to be positively terrifying for new faculty who are rejoining the bike culture for the first time since childhood. I often think, "What the hell kind of admissions standards do they have here, really?)

As a public service, I'm sharing my commandments of bicycling. They appear in no particular order of rantiness.

8. Thou shalt not ride to the far left the bike lane at really lame-o slow speeds. Similarly--because I knowest tis thee who does this--thou shalt not weave back and forth slowly across the bike lane.

9. Thou shalt not run down pedestrians.** Thou shalt in particular yield to pedestrians in crosswalks. Thou art allowed, however, to scowl at pedestrians who act stupidly by, say, stepping off the curb without looking both ways or who saunter casually and diagonally while crossing the street.

10. Thou shalt not ride a noisy bike. Get thee some bike lube and WD-40.

11. Thou shalt not ride thy bike on that particular main drag through downtown for those particular few blocks. Seriously, there are way too many cars, and it's one of the few places in town without a bike lane. It's just not safe, and it pisses me off when I'm in my car.

What are your bicycling pet peeves?

* How bike-friendly is my town? I ride two miles each way to work and on each trip I'm actually on a public street for less than 2 blocks. And there's never any traffic there. That's two miles of bike lanes and university roads with almost no vehicle traffic. And oh? I'm on university property for about 1.75 of those 2 miles. It's an enormous campus.

** A friend of mine was recently hit by a bicyclist while walking across the campus quad, on the grass. Top 12.5% of high school graduates, indeed. . .

And you shall take to heart the words which I teach you this day. Teach them diligently to your children . . . .

In other words, it's nice when you put a helmet on your kid--keepin' their brains inside their head and all, but if you don't wear one yourself, you pretty much tell your kid that his/her brains cease to be important after puberty.

I don't ride very much any more, due to my general laziness, which is a shame since I would ride about 1,500 to 2,000 miles a summer while in my youth. I still get out every once and a while in the suburbs, but most of my experience with folks on bikes occurs now as I sit behind a steering wheel and not handlebars.

But . . .

Thou shalt take a shower for fuck's sake after thou hast done thy part for thine environment and cycled fifteen miles to thy working or studying place.

Thou shalt obey traffic rules when thou art on a narrow road with stopped traffic and there are no breakdown lanes. If thou must touch my car in order to pass me on the right or are generally obnoxious whilst the rest of us await the greening of the light, a vindictive G-d gives us the right to smite you.

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About Me

Mom, Ph.D., clutterer, setting off on the tenure track in public history. My own interests trend toward museum studies, American studies, historic architecture and preservation, material culture, and women in science. I live with a gregarious and funny 5-year-old boy and a Cliffordesque puppy, and I'm married to the best husband and father in the whole world. I really don't deserve that distinction, but I selfishly keep him all to myself.